Warner Bros. Having A Down-and-out Year

February 28, 1986|By Candice Russell, staff writer

One could say that 1986 isn`t the year for Warners Bros. Several months ago, the studio sent to movie critics around the country the most elaborate special promotional package for a film in many a moon. The package contains 24 glossy 11-by-14 inch color and black-and-white photographs of scenes from the $30 million movie Revolution. Among the more impressive shots are life-size closeups of sultry Nastassja Kinski as ``a passionate patriot in the War of Independence,`` Annie Lennox of the rock group the Eurythmics in her screen debut as a colonial freedom fighter who bears tattoos for her cause, Al Pacino as a frontiersman who goes to war in spite of not believing in the fight for independence, and Donald Sutherland as a leader of the British Redcoats.

Now word comes from the local Warners` representative that Revolution won`t be coming to Florida theaters, ever. Bad reviews in other cities have convinced studio executives not to bother with the movie that recaps American history. ``It was made by Hugh Hudson who did Chariots of Fire, so who wouldn`t expect it to be a winner?,`` says representative Dave Copeland.

If you want to see Revolution, you`ll probably be able to rent it on video cassette shortly. The same goes for The Clan of the Cave Bear, the screen adaptation of Jean Auel`s novel that also comes from Warner Bros. This prehistoric adventure film stars Darryl Hannah as a woman wearing skimpy animal skins. She discovers sexual positions, just as Rae Dawn Chong did in Quest for Fire, and communicates in words that require the translation of subtitles. Cave Bear was royally panned by Chicago newspaper critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on their syndicated TV program At the Movies.

After these two earnest, expensive movies were doomed to instant obscurity, Warner Bros. is now looking forward to the release of a movie that is neither serious or costly -- Police Academy III. No kidding. Can you believe that the first two Police Academy films made in excess of $300 million? Police Academy II turned out to be one of the top-grossing movies of 1985.

WOODY ALLEN A WINNER

The French have long paid tribute to the comic genius of Jerry Lewis, years after the tributes stopped in this country. This made some people wonder about the peculiarity of the French people`s sense of humor.

Now our confreres across the sea have seen fit to name Woody Allen`s gentle comedy about the power of film fantasy The Purple Rose of Cairo as the Best Foreign Film of 1985 at the Cesar Awards, the Gallic equivalent of our Academy Awards. In the United States it wasn`t even nominated for best film.

Named best French film of the year at the Cesars was Three Men and a Basket, a comedy about the raising of an infant by bachelors. It was shown earlier this month at the third annual Miami Film Festival.

Speaking of Allen, there`s an interesting interview with the elusive auteur and his love affair with New York City in the February issue of GQ Magazine, which has developed a reputation for incisive film-related articles. Allen can walk the streets in virtual anonymity, the story reveals.

``The New York in my films is the way I`d like it to be,`` he says. ``I know the city isn`t really like that, and I feel terrible about what`s happened here. It`s like there was a dark cloud over New York -- the fear, the dirt, the graffiti and junk.``

SURREALIST SAMPLER

The Film Society of Miami has scheduled five weekends` worth of great movies. Luis Bunuel`s L`Age D`Or will be shown at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Arcadia Theater, 4120 Laguna St. in Coral Gables.

Other movies in the lineup titled Surrealist Sampler are That Obscure Object of Desire, a Bunuel film from 1977, same time, March 8-9, same place; Bunuel`s The Exterminating Angel (1962) March 15-16; Orpheus, written and directed by Jean Cocteau, March 22-23; and Cocteau`s Beauty and the Beast (1946), March 2930.

NAME GAME

If your last name were Hemingway, it would open doors to fame, if not fortune. Yet for Hilary Hemingway, who`s the niece of the late novelist Ernest Hemingway, talent is enough. Her screenplay A Light Within the Shadow won statewide and national contests after being judged without bearing any name at all. Republic Pictures plans to turn the screenplay into a movie. Production is set to begin next month in South Florida. The storyline, according to Hemingway, deals with her father`s ``fight for his own identity in the shadow of an American legend, as a man fighting for the light of life in the shadow of death.``